


And the Stars Will Shine

by executrix



Category: Blakes7
Genre: Fusion, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-04
Updated: 2011-07-04
Packaged: 2017-10-21 01:05:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/219199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An opera singer. The singer's revolutionary boyfriend. A corrupt official. This can't end well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And the Stars Will Shine

OVERTURE

"It's an elitist art form," Blake said. "We ought to be, I don’t know, going to a football match or whatever labor classes enjoy. And if I'm to take the whole evening—I ought to be working on my civil engineering mid-year project, you know—then I should be correlating the reports from the Anzacdome cell…"

"Not at all," Bran Foster said. "In fact, before the most recent imposition of curfew, there were always quite a few Deltas in the standing room. And isn't the world we want one with broader cultural options for everyone, not narrower ones? Don't argue with me, Roj, my mind's made up. Meet me at the Heroes of Kreutzenstadt tube station at, let's see, 1900 hours. No, make it 1800, we'll have a meal first. That should please you, eating high tea at 1800 like a Delta. I suppose you've got proper evening clothes? We can go backstage afterwards."

"I have not," Blake said. "My mother sent me money for a new suit, but I donated it toward Comrade Engelrheit's bail fund."

Bran Foster looked him up and down. "Well, then, a plain dark tunic will have to do. You're a well-set-up fellow, that'll absolve you of a multitude of sins."

ACT ONE  
Blake found himself entranced at the whole experience: the splendidly designed and furnished opera house, the glorious music, the unbridled passions poured forth in the performances, the cleverly designed settings, the projections and holograms. Bran Foster thought of trying to get his opera glasses back, but yielded to his young friend's enchantment.

Above all, Blake was magnetized by the central performance. Perhaps the composer thought that the soprano was the star of the show, but Blake felt quite otherwise. Sometimes Blake thought that the man was extraordinarily beautiful, sometimes quite plain, or even, in some lights, ugly. His movements, particularly with the ballet dancers as comparators, were awkward. But somehow, he was able to dominate the stage, and long before the first intermission, Blake couldn't look anywhere else.

There was a standing ovation—Blake was swept in it rather more quickly than Foster—and Foster tapped Blake on the shoulder. "I suppose you'll want me to make good on that promise," he said. They walked past the celebration going on in the star dressing room, to a somewhat more densely packed celebration in (Blake glanced hurriedly at the program) Kerr Avon's dressing room.

Avon himself, still wearing the more decorative portions of his fifth-act costume and his stage make-up, presided over the soiree while demolishing a hearty meal. An hour before curfew, Foster glanced at his watch, caught a knowing glance from the stage doorman, patted a dazed Blake on the back, and left.

Blake scarcely noticed, and he scarcely noticed as the crowd in the dressing room thinned out and he and Avon were talking about—whatever they talked about; Blake thought it was the most miraculously unnecessary conversation he had ever had, because they seemed to know everything the other was about to say, and agree from the depths of their souls, although Blake could never remember afterwards a single thing they had said.

Then Avon yawned immensely, rotated his shoulders backward, and stood up. "Go and wait in the car," he said. Blake wasn't quite sure where to find it, but it was parked right behind the stage door. Blake sat in the commodious back seat, marveling (the only time he had been in a private car had been at his grandfather's funeral, and he was in a much better mood now). Ten minutes later, Avon emerged, wearing a leather coat over a pair of dark trousers and a light gray shirt of the most expensive austerity. He tapped on the partition, and the car started up and quickly arrived at a luxury block of flats. The trip was so quick that it seemed pointless to drive at all—something Blake was drunk enough to think and just sober enough to not say out loud.

Avon's flat was on the thirty-ninth floor. He had called ahead, so there was a pot of coffee and a plate of sandwiches and a brick of ice with a bottle of raspberry vodka frozen inside, on the sideboard in the living room.

After another drink that Blake felt he really didn't need, he noticed that Avon was no longer in the room. In most Alpha apartment blocks, a misplaced host would be easily located, but Blake felt disorientated, wandering around from what seemed to be dozens of rooms to room. The looking-glasses all over the place didn't help. He stumbled into what proved to be a much-needed lavatory (and noticed that the walls were papered with bad notices). Two rooms later, he saw what had to be the, or at any rate a, bedroom. Candles gave off a delicious scent and rendered the shadows of the vases of flowers sinister. One of the bedside lamps was lit, creating an oval of light in which Avon reclined, wrapped in a dressing gown that Blake thought probably cost more than his parents' flat.

"Ah, there you are at last, Roj. Aren't you going to audition?" Avon asked. "Or are you waiting for your accompanist to arrive?"

"I was just working out how they did the holographic brocade," Blake said with a grin, sitting down on the bed and sliding his hand up from one neatly posed knee. "Lovely bit of material, that."

ACT TWO  
A week later, Blake scraped together the money for a standing room ticket, watched, enraptured, and almost floated backstage. By the time it occurred to him to worry about being allowed in, he had been ("Maestro says you're always allowed behind," the doorman said with a smirk). Once again, when the laughing crowd in the dressing room had dispersed, he found himself once again ensconced in luxurious private transportation, luxurious private flat, and luxurious….certainly not a public accommodation.

"See here, Avon," Blake said, catching his breath. "You're rather famous. I didn't know."

Avon laughed. "It's rather like being one of those legendary rulers who went about disguised hoping to hear how marvelous their peasantry thought they were. Yes, of course I'm rather famous, you great lump."

Blake didn't have the time (both the Federation Academy of Engineering and the Cause being full-time jobs) or the interest to attend every performance even in the Central Opera House, and at times he felt rather relieved when Avon went on tour or when it was necessary for publicity holograms to be taken with a glamorous soprano or ballerina, with Blake fading conveniently into the background.

Over time, Blake learned that, while his lover was capable of childish malice (he flinched as each new soprano took up too much of the spotlight during an aria, only to find her train pinned down by a boot when she attempted to move to her next position) his generosity could be breathtakingly random. Once, Blake mentioned that a classmate's father was more than likely to die before the medical school in the Gamma precinct got around to his particular disease. Within two days, the gaffer found himself whisked off in Avon's limousine, relieved of several organs, re-plumbed, and recuperating next to a Cabinet Minister.

A bad review could send him into a paroxysm of sarcasm, or one of despair, a good review could be shrugged off as something as inevitable as the Dome overhead, or could make both of them ecstatic. And a memorable bout of furniture-wrecking, clawing-and-biting sex ensued when Avon brought down the house in a magical performance that sent him into the worst temper Blake had ever seen him in. "But why aren't you happy? That was a splendid performance, you've never been better, everything you did was somehow perfect…"

"Yes, but I don't know **why** , or rather, how…."

ACT THREE   
"But how do you know where I've been?" Blake asked, coldly dreading exactly how large his audience had been. He'd thought that the mission had been completed successfully, but obviously it took more than the absence of uniformed troopers to prove that.

"Because I followed you," Avon said. "It's bad enough being betrayed, but with a….hulking….creature….like that? That was the least convincing drag I've ever seen, and considering that I got my start in provincial opera houses, that's saying something."

"Avon, it wasn't an amorous assignation. I was there on Freedom Party business. It was the Marchesa Attavanti's idea, anyway," Blake said. That happened to be the truth, and appeals to Avon's snobbery usually worked. "She's his sister, and she wanted to help, but it was too dangerous for her to go out herself to help him. Comrade Olag Gangelotti has just escaped from prison, you see, and I was detailed to bring him some food, and money, and an inter-city transit visa, and those ridiculous clothes of course."

"Oh, good Lord, don't tell me you're some sort of subversive."

"Of course," Blake said. "It's like your being rather famous. I thought you knew."

"Why? What part of your body was it tattooed onto? Dammit!" Avon said. "You've no idea how conservative opera management are. If this gets out, I'll lose bookings worth…thousands. Perhaps tens of thousands. Well, it must be the truth, you haven't the imagination to make up something like that."

"It's no good your threatening to shop me," Blake said. "Because once you go down that road, even if you play the innocent, outraged patriot with all the fervor of your best role, they won't believe you. Touch pitch, and you'll be defiled."

"If you can say that, you can't know me at all."

"Of course I don't know you, Avon," Blake said. "With everything you've done to shut me out. I admit I haven't been entirely candid with you, but that's because I had other people's secrets to protect. I've no idea what you're concealing from me."

ACT FOUR  
"I can't think this will improve my standing with Blake," Avon said, putting down the second tiny frozen vodka glass and heaping caviar on a piece of toast. "He's dreadfully jealous."

Baroness Scorpio, Commandant of Central Security, shrugged. "When we consider what is to be done with degenerates who are enemies of the state, our first response is seldom 'Marriage counseling.'" She took up an orange, sliced away the peel in one long spiral, and cut it into segments, the sharp scent needling the air. "I'm sorry to say that you seem quite blasé about having been brought here." (His limousine had not been waiting at the stage door after the matinee; a smaller, squatter, and altogether less attractive vehicle, and a driver who did not exchange quips, sat there. The two Central Security operatives wore leather coats that were much longer than his own, but of notably inferior quality, and the utility-grade building was one where no one was glad to be summoned, and few other than the employees ever left again.)

"After all, Baroness, if you have been famous as long as I have—beginning as a mere boy chorister, of course—it is no novelty to have admirers in the highest as well as the lowest of places. You wanted an autograph, perhaps?"

"Avon, I'm giving you the possibility of getting **my** autograph, precisely when you need it the most."

Avon raised an eyebrow and waited for her to continue, a tactic that she recognized as one that had often been successful in interrogations.

The luxuriously appointed room contained a long table, clothed in white lace and spread nearly edge to edge with Inner Party victuals and drink, surrounded by chairs in the highest Chippendale XVI style; several brown leather club chairs; and a chaise longue. There was a bank of monitors along one wall, and the Baroness adjusted the dials until all the monitors showed the same image: Blake's face, his curls compressed by an iron band, tightened by a hand moving in and out of the frame. And all the speakers broadcast the same sound: Blake's scream.

Baroness Scorpio froze the picture and turned the audio down to an obbligato.

"We've captured Blake. You can save him. I'll give you two safe-conducts that will allow you to leave Londondome."

"And why, precisely, would you refrain from exercising the state's just vengeance upon such a dangerous liberal, when one falls into your grasp?" Avon had an image of his manager tearing up season after season of contracts, thousands of credits vanishing in smoke. He couldn't understand why this had happened to him. He had always lived for art, lived for pleasure—the pleasure he felt in drawing the sphere of the music and moving within it, the pleasure the audiences felt, the things they could create with the inspiration of that beauty. And now it was all to disappear.

"A balance must be struck," the Baroness said, adjusting her train to better effect. "The populace will not pay through the nose for us to protect them unless they feel themselves in danger. Gangelotti's escape has given us at Central Security a black eye—and just before funding renewal, too. What a shame, that. So what I'm offering you is a chance to do what you do best—participate in a theatrical spectacle for the amusement of a small tranche of the population. But one that really matters. The news will be filled with the footage of Blake's execution, of the pyre where his body will burn. But it will all be a sham, of course. The "execution" will be staged, and once the production wraps, you can take him away with you."

Avon stood still, willing his cold hands not to tremble. His face showed nothing, but a cramp like an iron bar seized the feet in his rather high-heeled boots. "Perhaps I should go now and coach him in performing an effective death scene."

"Ah, yes," the Baroness said. "I remember reading one of your notices. The critic said he had never seen anyone take quite so long to die." She found the remote control in one of the epergnes, and switched off the security camera. "There, you see, we're truly alone now. You haven't asked what my payment will be. Or, perhaps, you understand already? You understood from the first?"

"Was ever man in this humor wooed? Was ever man in this humor won?"

"Here," Scorpio said, signing the two documents. "But they expire at midnight, so don't dawdle."

He clasped one hand around her neck, forcing up her chin as she gasped for breath. "Oh, yes," she said, effortfully. "You see? Despite your—proclivities—you can be all man when you need to be." She closed her eyes as he tilted his head down, bringing their faces closer together.

"Open your eyes," he said. With his other hand, he buried the knife inside her shoulder blade, slicing through the icy satin. The flatter metal smell of blood replaced the spray of orange in the air and the jasmine in the vases. " **This** is Avon's kiss," he said.

He gathered up the safe-conducts—he didn't think they were worth much, but they had been expensive—and went looking for Blake. He thought that Central Security would be traditional enough to make "dungeon" a good guess, so he headed downward.

THE FINAL ACT  
Blake leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. "I suppose there's a camera of some sort, that someone is watching me. It's a comfort in a way. Not to die alone, and for my last words to be preserved. I don't want to die, of course, but this is the message I want to get out to your masters. The message I'd like to send out to everybody, though I don't suppose you'll let them see it. Perhaps even in this fortress, we have a comrade, because there are comrades everywhere. And a message to one person…well. I don't know if you want to kill me because you understand me too well, and fear me, or because you don't understand me at all. It's clear that you don't understand history, that you don't know that all empires fall because in the end, the masses who want freedom always are too strong for the few who strive to keep it from them. The Freedom Party must win, because freedom must always win. We don't want much, only a world where there's honest work for everyone, and a fair paycheck at the end of the workweek and a fair share of the world's goods. A fair share of the goods of a world that is clean and safe, not poisoned. A world where honest men aren't penned in cages, but can breathe clean free air. Where, after a day's work, they can look up and see the stars. And you see, we will always win, because the stars will always shine."

It wasn't the dungeon, but the courtyard, where Avon found Blake. He didn't know why he had believed the Baroness at all, with any part of his mind or his heart, but somehow he had found his enemy more credible than any friend could be, and he had violated all his stated convictions and hoped.

Avon crouched on the stained flagstones, gathered Blake's head onto his lap, and sang, softly, a simple Welsh lullaby that he had learned for Blake's birthday, which was never going to arrive. Avon thought it was one of his better performances. Not his best, though. **That** had been rather less verbal.

He finished the song, and encored, a little louder. He could hear footsteps. Of course he hadn't expected the Baroness' body to go undiscovered forever. Her living body certainly hadn't.

He waited.

With a brilliant smile on his face.

**Author's Note:**

> Glitterboy1 hosted a ficathon for opera-based stories, and I'd been meaning for ages to write a B7 version of Tosca.


End file.
